Gussie+Ellergood

On Saturday, July 1, 1882, Gussie Ellergood of Carlisle, Illinois, died in a St. Louis hospital. She had been admitted the previous Wednesday after having taken sick. Her death was due to a botched abortion. Gussie was a servant working in the home of Dr. Edgar Park.

She made a deathbed statement to a nurse naming Dr. Robert McWilliams as her abortionist, though McWilliams denied any knowledge of her.

The //St. Louis Post-Dispatch// said that Gussie "had been betrayed by a villain named Harry J. Pate, who, through the medium of slushy love letters, gained her affections and then deserted her." As McWilliams' trial date approached, Pate was in the workhouse due to vagrancy, so even if he had stayed with Gussie her prospects would have been poor.

I have been unable so far to determine the outcome of McWilliams' trial.

I have no information on overall maternal mortality, or abortion mortality, in the 19th century. I imagine it can't be too much different from maternal and abortion mortality at the very beginning of the 20th Century. Note, please, that with issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more on this era, see [|Abortion Deaths in the 19th Century]. For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

Sources:
 * "Arrested for Abortion", //Winona Daily Republican//, July 3, 1882
 * "A St. Louis Abortion Case, //Newark (OH) Advocate//, July 3, 1882
 * "Current Condensed News," //Indianapolis News//, July 4, 1882
 * "Cady's Court," //St. Louis Post-Dispatch//, September 12, 1882
 * "City News," //St. Louis Post-Dispatch//, September 13, 1882



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